[Critical-Realism] The ID/TD Distinction

["Brian Dick" <briandick51@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Louis,

Louis wrote:

Why not
rather
say that the theory of relativity is once and for all transitive, with
the
understanding that transitive theories can be objects of knowledge?  I
can't
see much difference except one of nomenclature.  Moreover, when we make
a
theory into an object of knowledge, surely it is essential to treat it
as
having the essential property of being transitive - we would falsify the
theory of relativity if we treated it as anything less than transitive.


While it appears that this is just problem of semantics/nomenclature, I
think that if the intransitive dimension refers to objects that exist
independently of their investigation/identification, then Tobin's approach
is correct.  That is, if we were to do a sociology of knowledge/science of
the theory of relativity, relativity would be an 'intransitive' object in
that the things/mechanisms we discover/identify about it by placing it in
its intellectual and, more importantly, social and historical context exist
independently of their identification.

Thus, for example, taking quantum mechanics (i.e., a transitive object for
the physicist) as an object of social scientific inquiry that exists
independently of the identification of the (social) mechanisms that were
influential in bringing it about--such as Weimar culture, for
example--turns quantum mechanics into an intransitive object of
inquiry. Now, a physicist (rather than a social scientist) may go back and
draw on the materials of quantum mechanics in the transitive dimension (to
falsify, develop, critique, etc.), but this would be different from a social
scientist inquiring into quantum mechanics, most likely to do sociology
rather than physics, in which QM would become the intransitive object of
inquiry.

Best,
Brian
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